Quote

Nature, as man has always known it, he knows no more. Since he has learned to esteem signs above symbols, to suppress his emotional reactions in favor of practical ones and make use of nature instead of holding so much of it sacred, he has altered the face, if not the heart, of reality.

Susanne Katherina Langer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Susanne Katherina Langer
Make
Face
Holding
Altered
Always
Known
Esteem
Signs
Men
Faces
Sacred
Favor
Use
Emotional
Practicals
Nature
Ones
Practical
Reality
Instead
Symbols
Heart
Learned
Reactions
Much
Since
Favors
Suppress

More quotes by Susanne Katherina Langer

Image
Every artistic form reflects the dynamism that is constantly building up the life of feeling.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art?
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Fire is a natural symbol of life and passion, though it is the one element in which nothing can actually live.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Religion, even the most primitive and superstitious, is inevitably a beginning of culture. It is not possible without some kind of symbolic expression ... and begets dramatic gesture, dance, and chant.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
The power of magic has no known limits. A person knows, in a fair way, his own physical capacities, the weight of the blows he can deal, the furthest range of his arrows, the strength of his voice, the speed and endurance of his running but the reaches of his mind are indefinite and, to his feeling, infinite.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
We have no physical model of this endless rhythm of individuation and involvement, we do have its image in the world of art, most purely in dance.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
The historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes his aim is to link fact to fact, one unique knowable event to another individual one that begot it.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Feeling, in the broad sense of whatever is felt in any way, as sensory stimulus or inward tension, pain, emotion or intent, is the mark of mentality.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Common-sense knowledge is prompt, categorical, and inexact.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
The dancer, or dancers, must transform the stage for the audience as well as for themselves into an autonomous, complete, virtual realm, and all motions into a play of visible forces in unbroken, virtual time...Both space and time, as perceptible factors, disappear almost entirely in the dance illusion.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
A signal is comprehended if it serves to make us notice the object or situation it bespeaks. A symbol is understood when we conceive the idea it presents.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the higher criticism, the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
the wide discrepancy between reason and feeling may be unreal it is not improbable that intellect is a high form of feeling - a specialized, intensive feeling about intuitions.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
It is significant that people who refuse to tell their children fairytales do not fear that the children will believe in princes and princesses, but that they will believe in witches and bogeys.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Speech is the mark of humanity. It is the normal terminus of thought.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Music is the tonal analogue of emotive life.
Susanne Katherina Langer